Akumal Bride

Maybe check out Ana Y Jose. El Pez is pretty cool. I've heard good things about Nueva vida de Ramiro. Most places around there aren't luxury per se. Most of the area is off the electrical grid, so only a couple of them have a/c. Mezzanine might be the most upscale option. Any of those places will offer you a very different experience from an AI though.

I second Tlseege. Tulum seems like it would fit your bill. It's just about a half hour down the road from Grand Bahia Principe and there are a ton of small 'Eco resorts' right on Tulum's gorgeous stretch of beach. Most are basically cabanas on the beach, so it's sort of the anti all-inclusive mega-resort deal. They vary in price, but you can find some more affordable options if you don't need luxury. Once there, you can hang on the beach or check out the Mayan ruins either in Tulum or at Coba, which is only about a 30 minute drive away. Or you can visit the sian ka'an biosphere, which is pretty cool. Tulum is way more low key that Playa Del Carmen, Cozumel or Cancun. If you're looking for clubs or things like that, it's probably not your place.

As far as activities in the Riviera Maya, you can't go wrong with a snorkeling excursion. There are a number of catamarans that operate out of the marina at Puerto Aventuras that go out on day trips, and take you to good snorkel spots. Akumal has good snorkeling right off the beach. As others have mentioned, both x-plor and Hidden Worlds are really cool. X-plor is a slicker operation with various different activities. Hidden Worlds is a bit more down home, but their caves are unbelievable. Truly spectacular. If your looking for a more tradition bachelorette, I would highly recommend Playa crawl. http://www.playacrawl.com we did that a few days before our wedding. It's basically a guided club crawl through Playa where you don't have to wait in lines or for drinks. some of the clubs are kind of cheesy, but our group of 15 had a blast. They will also come pick you up at your resort.

I can't help you picking a resort, but I can tell you from experience that Al Cielo puts on a great wedding, and as you know, it's really gorgeous. Since there are only a few rooms there, our guests stayed at a condo building called Playa Caribe in nearby Akumal, which they really loved. Condos might be a better option if your guests are adventurous or at least somewhat comfortable being In a new country, though.

Hi Laura, you may need to look outside of PDC proper and outside of an all inclusive resort if you really want to prioritize having a private beach ceremony with no gawkers. All the beaches in Mexico are open to the public and the stretch of beach in Playa is very well travelled. The resorts also aren't going to close off a section of thier beach to thier other guests for a wedding ( which they can't do legally anyway) though I would hope other resort guests would keep a respectful distance. I might look at some of the smaller resorts outside of town. People on this forum have had nice things to say about La Reve and Esencia, which look nice if a bit expensive. I got married last year at a small hotel called Al Cielo, that is south of PDC. It was really great, on a gorgeous and pretty secluded stretch of a beach called Xpu Ha. We didn't have any gawkers. Just a few ideas. Also, I'm sure that your fiancé will find plenty of Coronas, but there's not much surfing to be had in the RM, at least around PDC. Waves are too small. Lots of kiteboarding, though.

Hi Yzzel. I would suggest contacting Aida Tantadell. She did my makeup in May, and was really great. She has a salon in downtown PDC, but will also come to you for weddings. it was $200, and she didn't require any other people to get there makeup done. She is really sweet, though the only challenge is that her English is pretty limited. That said, we had no problem between her English and my broken Spanish. She's a real pro and knows what she's doing. She uses MAC makeup, and I know she does airbrush as well. ( that might cost more than the $200, but I didn't get that.) Her number is: (52) 984 873 3910 Her salon is constitutuyentes and Ave. 10 Good luck!

Good question. I looked at a couple video tutorials online. Just Google Mexican Tissue Paper Flowers and there are lots of instructions. Making the flowers was actually pretty easy, if a bit time consuming. Figuring out how to get them to Mexico was a bit trickier. Basically, there are two steps to making the flowers: Cutting them out and assembling them, and fluffing them out. I did the cutting and assembling at home, and was able to carefully pack them up in bundles when they were still flat so the traveled in my luggage. I puffed the flowers up once we were in Mexico. This worked well because we were in Mexico for a week before the wedding and enlisted some friends to help in the fluffing, which took awhile. I'm not sure I'd go the paper flower route if I only had a few days before the wedding, since it takes some time to do a large quantity.I'd rather be hanging by the pool. I also brought some floral foam from home to help with arranging the flowers in the vases. They have wire stems, so arranging them was pretty easy. One benefit to the paper flowers is that we were able to making matching poof decorations (I don't know what they are really called) with our extra tissue. You can see them hanging here:

Seeing as our wedding was in Mexico, I decided to make tissue paper flowers for our centerpieces and napkin rings (people ended up wearing the flowers as the night wore on and the tequila flowed). I'm sure I saved some money, but it was pretty time consuming to make the flowers in the months before the wedding. I bought some cheap vases and margarita pitchers at an awesome glass store in Playa Del Carmen, then picked up limes at a local farmers market.

I bet your quests would appreciate even a non-private cruise.

Hey Cara, we used a company called Paradise Catamarans http://www.paradisecatamarans.com and they were really awesome. Easy to work with and the crew was so accommodating. The boat is very nice, I think it holds up to 50 people, and we had an open bar and snacks. They sail out of the marina at Puerto Aventuras, which isn't far from Playacar. They picked all our guests up in vans from Akumal.

We did something similar, albeit in Mexico and not in the Bahamas. We chartered a catamaran for a 4-hour sail and snorkel trip for 45 people, and I have to say it was really awesome and I'm so glad we did it. It wasn't cheap, but it gave everyone a chance to get to know each other, and it was really unique. Our guests loved it (except for the one who got really, really seasick even though we provided Dramamine beforehand) and I know they really appreciated us doing that, considering they spent a lot of vacation time and money to attend our wedding. I say go for it. I know a lot of people get exciting about putting together gift bags and giving presents to their guests, but we skipped all that and did the catamaran instead. I think it was a better use of our limited funds.

So, at the risk of being the massive downer here, I actually disagree with the prevailing wisdom on this thread. I think that destination wedding etiquette is different in this situation, in that it's sort of rude on the part of the bride and groom to not give their guests a plus one right off the bat. Think about it from your guest's perspective: They are spending hundreds—if not a thousand or more—dollars, not to mention using up precious vacation time etc. to attend your wedding. Sure, some guests probably do know a handful or more of the other attendees, but that doesn't necessarily mean they want to spend their entire vacation with those people. I think most people want to spend their vacation time with a person of their choosing, and not giving them a plus one basically forces them to go on vacation solo. That is probably enough to make some people rethinking coming at all. I think guests tend to be more excited to travel to a wedding if they have someone of their choosing to pal around with. It seems pretty awkward to tell your guests that they can bring someone to the resort, but they have to ditch that person for the actual wedding, especially given the investment your guests are making to be there. I totally get the concern over costs and wanting a small event. But for me, this was one of those areas where we sucked up the cost and try to find ways to save money elsewhere. We had some people bring +1s to our wedding who we didn't know beforehand, but after a few days of partying together beforehand, they seemed like old friends and it was fun to have them at the wedding. Just my two cents

I' m going to second the other posters. We were in PDC last November, and they had a massive stage erected on the beach. Personally, I'd avoid that time frame or choose a different location.